


My Girl

by mistleto3



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, AsaNoya Halloween Week 2016, F/M, Fluff, Nightmares, Trans Character, trans woman!Asahi, tw: transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8369446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistleto3/pseuds/mistleto3
Summary: “She wanted to laugh at herself for being naïve enough to believe that the good days had really happened; in that moment, they seemed like vivid dreams that, in her misguided optimism, she’d mistaken for reality.”For Asanoya Halloween Week 2016, Day 1: Nightmares.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic can also be found on [Tumblr.](http://mistleto-3.tumblr.com/post/152250732359/nightmares)

Even after all this time, crossing the threshold of her apartment to step outside still ignited a little flicker of fear in the pit of Asahi’s stomach. Her heartbeat would ever-so-subtly quicken, and she would take a deep breath to steady herself as she closed the door behind her and locked herself out. As she took the first step down the stairway towards the pavement, she would lower her head.

Anxiety had become a routine to her, even before she worked up the courage to start finally wearing the pretty skirts and coral-coloured lipsticks she used to buy and then immediately stuff at the back of her wardrobe. But that anxiety had only gotten worse when she finally did muster that courage. The second she stepped outside, she could feel the eyes on her, gazes like nails raking over her skin, over the soft pale blue fabric of her dress, over the rouge on her cheeks and the mascara on her eyelashes. The quickest of sideways glances was enough to remind her how ungainly she was; six feet and one inch of giantess with cumbersome broad shoulders and meaty limbs and huge hands, so out-of-place stuffed into a pretty blue dress and made up like a doll to soften the angles of her face. So she would keep her head down as she walked, her eyes fixed on the tarmac beneath the soles of her shoes, hoping that if she couldn’t see people staring, she wouldn’t feel it.

But she did, she always did. 

Most of the time though, the staring people blessedly stopped at staring; it was rare they’d step up and actually say anything to her. She heard them whisper, though, of course she did. As much as she tried not to listen, to lose the murmurs beneath the babble of the crowd, she always managed to pick up the whispers. Sometimes, they were innocent, curious, confused. _Mummy, why is that man wearing a dress?_ Asahi could just about cope with those. 

But sometimes they were malicious. Slurs hissed under people’s breath but dripping with malice as though the speakers longed to hurl them in her face, parents drawing their children in closer whenever she walked by. Every time she heard those whispers, she had to sink her teeth into her bottom lip to keep herself from crying.

Thankfully, the whispers were becoming less and less frequent. In the first few months she’d dared to dress as she wanted outside of the house, they’d been daily, but as the years progressed and the hormones and surgery and electrolysis began to work their magic, the whispers became a little less frequent; people would have to look for a few seconds before they became suspicious, and most people didn’t have that kind of time. They were too busy with their own lives to worry about the tall young lady in the seat in front of them on the bus with slightly square shoulders.

The whispers hadn’t stopped completely, though. In truth, Asahi never expected them to. No matter how much money she poured into treatments and surgery and makeup and clothes, she was always painfully aware of her towering height, approaching a foot taller than most of the women she knew. She wasn’t the only one aware of her height either; people did double takes, people stared, some even looked intimidated. But at least they didn’t whisper as much as they used to; a tall woman is less of a spectacle than a man in a dress. And every day she got through without hearing a whisper, every day she got through without someone hesitating before they referred to her as “Miss,” was another little victory, another cause for quiet celebration. And to Asahi’s great relief, the days without whispers were finally beginning to outnumber the bad days.  

Of course, the bad days still came by every once in a while though, and some were worse than others. Sometimes the whispers were louder, and sometimes they weren’t whispers at all. Sometimes they were outbursts, shrieks.

They were shrieks today.

Asahi hadn’t expected to see her grandmother here; she didn’t go into the town much now that she was struggling with her mobility, and it was rare she ever left the nursing home, especially alone. But she was there, standing by the bus stop near Asahi’s work.

The old woman caught sight of Asahi as she approached the bus shelter, and her expression morphed quickly from confusion to recognition to shock to _horror,_ and she let out a cry of anguish.

“Asahi?! What on earth have you done to yourself?”

Asahi froze; her grandmother had never seen her like this, she didn’t even _know_. The last time her grandmother had seen her, she’d worn men’s clothes and sported a goatee, and now she wore a dress that matched the ribbon that held her waist-length hair out of her face.

“It’s one thing for my grandson to be a pervert, but to parade it around in public like this? There are children about; you should be ashamed of yourself!” she hissed.

“Grandma, that’s not what this is…” Asahi pleaded.

“I always knew there was something off about you, boy. You’ve never been like the other lads. Always so quiet, always so quick to tears,” her gaze flickered towards Asahi’s eyes as she spoke, spotting the faint glistening there and giving her a scathing look. “I told your parents I was concerned when you started playing girls’ sports and stopped cutting your hair, and now look at you. I was always afraid you’d turn out gay, but I thought you were raised well enough to at least have the decency not to flaunt it. Your poor mother and father, what do you think people are going to say about them behind their backs? They’ll be mortified.”

“I’m not gay, Grandma. Please, keep your voice down…”

“Then what on Earth are you doing dressed like that?”

“I’m a girl, Grandma. I’m transgender.” Asahi felt the tears spill down her cheeks as she spoke, painfully aware that everyone around them was staring at her, their eyes burning her flesh.

The expression on her grandmother’s face contorted from disappointment to revulsion, and her tone turned from chastisement to shouting, disgust dripping from her voice. “Shame on you, Asahi! No matter what your perversions were, I always thought you were a good boy, even if you were queer. But I never imagined you’d be this backward in the head! I was there when your mother brought you into this world, and she brought you into it a boy, and that’s the way you’ll go out of it. I won’t abide this nonsense of yours for one moment. You should be embarrassed by yourself!”

The burning tears welling in Asahi’s eyes had blurred her vision so badly that she almost couldn’t make out her grandmother’s expression, but she didn’t know whether to be thankful that she didn’t have to see the dismay on her face or humiliated by her own weakness. She opened her mouth to protest, to defend herself, but she couldn’t muster so much as a whimper; she was too afraid she’d vomit if she let her lips hang open too long.

Her vision returned to focus as the tears finally spilled past her lashes, and as it did, the first thing she caught sight of was her own reflection in a shop window. The sight of it made Asahi’s skin crawl; every facet of her reflection’s body was _wrong._ Its shoulders, its jawline, its neck, its chest, its hips, its height, its legs, its arms, its hairline, its eyes, its stature… It might as well have been a stranger to her. All she saw standing there was a sobbing boy in a pink skirt.

Standing in that street in that moment, she wanted to give up; she wanted to fall through the tarmac and cease to exist. She wanted to laugh at herself for being naïve enough to believe that the good days had really happened; in that moment, they seemed like vivid dreams that, in her misguided optimism, she’d mistaken for reality. As she stared at her grandmother’s face, she found herself asking if this had really all been worth it, and the overwhelming answer resounding inside her head was:

_It hadn’t._

“Asahi!” She flinched as her grandmother’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

“Asahi.” A different voice called her name this time, distant, as though she was hearing it from underwater. She spun on her heel, searching for the source.

“Asahi…”

 

It was difficult to see through the tears pooled in her eyes, but she could about make out the bars of dim light stretched across the ceiling that filtered in between the half-closed blinds. She blinked the tears away as she turned towards the source of the noise; Yuu had propped himself up on his elbow in the bed beside her, and he was looking at her with a concerned crease between his eyebrows.

“Asahi? Are you alright?”

She nodded stiffly.

“You were crying; were you having a nightmare or something?” he said quietly.

Asahi nodded again, going to wipe her eyes on the back of her hand, but Yuu caught her wrist to stop her, then dabbed the tears away with a tissue.

“Thank you…” she whispered as she cuddled up to Yuu’s chest. The warmth of his skin grounded her, the tickle of his breath as it skimmed her bare arms reminded her that she was awake. None of it had been real. 

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close. “Do you wanna talk about it…?”

Asahi let out a shaky sigh against his collarbone, then murmured: “I had a dream my grandma… found out about me. She didn’t take it well…” She paused to take a deep breath. “She was always the kind of person who’d complain about “those perverts” if ever there was a story about gay people on the news, and she always used to grimace if she saw two guys or two girls holding hands. When I joined the volleyball team in middle school, she made fun of me for doing a “girl’s sport,” and when I started growing my hair, the first thing she’d say whenever she saw me wasn’t “hello;” it was “you need a haircut.” I knew she’d never accept me.” Asahi gave another, sigh, weaker this time. “I feel really bad for being glad she isn’t around anymore… She was my grandmother, and of course I loved her… but I’m glad I never had to come out to her, and that’s so horrible of me...”

“Don’t be silly,” Yuu chided gently. “It’s not horrible of you to be glad you didn’t have to deal with that.” He kissed her cheek.

“It was just… scary… I was at a bus stop, and she was yelling at me, and everyone was staring…” Her voice wavered, and she hesitated.

“Hey… You know I’d always be there if anything like that ever really happened, and you know I’d fight anyone who said any of that shit to you if I needed to. Little old lady, big muscly dude, you name it. Nobody talks to my girl like that, not even her grandma,” he said firmly, and Asahi couldn’t help but giggle weakly at the determination in his voice. It was just like Yuu to jump to her defence, even if all he was defending her from was a ghost in a nightmare.

“You don’t need to be scared; I’ve got your back, whatever you need.”

“Thanks, Yuu,” Asahi said softly, smiling despite herself.

“I don’t think she’d even recognise you if she saw you now, anyway; you look so different to how you did in high school. Not that you haven’t always been gorgeous, but now you’re even more gorgeous.”

“You’re such a flirt…” she protested, her cheeks warming at the compliment. It was difficult to be around Yuu and still feel self-conscious; there was something about the soft look in his eyes as they lingered on her face that kindled a sort of warmth deep in her chest, and the genuine grin that spread across his lips no matter how hard he tried to keep a straight face as he complimented her still gave her butterflies, just like it used to all those years ago when they were still in school.

“If you had a girlfriend that looked like you, you’d be a flirt too,” he replied, and Asahi hid her face in his shoulder bashfully. 

“Sorry for waking you,” she murmured, clumsily changing the subject.

“Don’t worry about it. You know I’m always here for you, even if it is 4am. You’re my girl, ‘s my job.”

 _My girl._ From the moment they’d first gotten together, almost five years ago now, that had always been his pet name for her. No matter how much Asahi had doubted herself, no matter how afraid she was of leaving the house, Yuu had always been there, cheering her on. No matter how scary things got, Yuu was her safe harbour. No matter how the world saw her, and no matter how much it hurt that they saw her that way, it was a great comfort to know that Yuu would always see her as _my girl._ There had been times Asahi didn’t think she’d have gotten through if it wasn’t for him, but just like always, he had her back. He had been her guardian deity in the nights when she would otherwise have lost faith.

“Thank you,” Asahi said. As his fingertips wandered up the back of her neck to comb through her hair, she leaned up to press her lips softly to his.

After a long moment, the kiss broke and he looked down at her. “You feeling better now?”

She gave a small, grateful nod, and he smiled.

“Good. Come on, let’s go back to sleep.”

Asahi nodded, then shifted to tuck herself under Yuu’s arm, resting her head on his chest and draping her arm across his stomach.

“I love you,” Yuu murmured, giving her a quick kiss on the forehead before he leaned back against the pillows.

“I love you too,” Asahi whispered, then allowed her eyes to slide closed. The fear that had constricted her lungs when she’d awoken had vanished, blown away like a wisp of smoke, leaving behind the quiet contentment that seemed to radiate outwards from Yuu’s skin with his body heat. As peace settled over the room, Asahi allowed the sound of his heartbeat to lull her to sleep.


End file.
